Heart Child Yoga creates a powerful personalized healing experience by using innovative therapy techniques. Children are served through the use of yoga therapy, Conscious Support Method (CSM), sound healing, energy work, mantra practice, and yoga nidra.
Private Sessions
Private sessions create an opportunity for your child to deepen their existing practice, or to develop one that supports their individual needs. Sessions are personally tailored and arranged according to your child’s inspirations, intentions, and interest.
Group Classes
In group classes children learn to work collectively while also attending to their personal practice. Breath work, meditation, individual and group poses are explored. The classes are playful, at times, but also give the child a chance to connect peaceful with their Hearts and others.
Yoga for Special Needs
Heat Child Yoga believes that all children are here with very important gifts. Children with special needs are no exception to this. They are ,in fact, exceptional in their gifts. Heart Child Yoga will “see” your child and their gifts and will honor them while facilitating a richer experience for them that reaches far beyond the walls of the studio.
Yoga at School
Heart Child Yoga offers group classes for schools for all ages and needs. Yoga in school enriches all areas of a student’s school experience. Yoga practices increase self esteem, improve concentration, and create a physical and mental state of peace. Classroom workshops for teachers are also available for additional support and benefits.
HCY is dedicated to consciously supporting and serving, with a uniquely deeper understanding, all aspects of the whole child..
For over thirteen years I worked as a special education teacher. From the very beginning, I can remember my co-workers talking about the changes in our children as a sign of possible human evolution (update: a topic I have changed my mind on over the past 20 years). It was almost impossible for most of us to understand back then what that really meant, but we somehow “knew”. The changes and gifts along with challenges of these children were so obvious that it couldn’t be ignored. Of course, this was all whisper talk outside of the classrooms, offices, and meetings. It was the teachers’ observations, but they did not fit the system. So some of us quietly tried to learn from the children and understand them as best we could under the weight of a struggling system that was not created with an understanding of who they fully are. Mostly it was just talk, though, because we knew little of how to truly serve certain aspects of the “whole” child.
Eventually, this turned into finding families that noticed that their children were so far beyond and greater than any label they carried. In my later years as a teacher, I began to advise families on the deeper reasons why their children were responding to our society and other the way they were. By this time, I was deep into my meditation and yoga practice and was experiencing some similar senses that the children I served were. I was also meeting more and more people that grew up with many types of abilities. I asked their advise, and listened to their stories, of how it was to grow up in a world that couldn’t “see” you. During this time, I also became the parent of a unique and vibrant child. He taught me first hand that the old rules do not apply.
There is a new way for all children (or maybe it’s an old way) that we are still in the process of discovering. I have dedicated my life to help create this better way. Each child I serve teaches me more about who I am, and who we need to be in order to help them fulfill their missions on this planet. Their time has come to show us how to create a peaceful connection on this beautiful blue globe. Please join me, my beautiful son, and all God’s children that are ready for more!
*Follow their stories and the lessons the children are teaching us at the Wisdom from the Children blog series Wisdom from the Children
By: Jennifer R. Dignon
Jennifer Mehlich is a unique GEM of a soul who passionately devotes herself to serving children of all needs through offering yoga and meditation practice to meet the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of all children, including and especially those with “special needs.” She sees, honors and shares the wisdom and gifts that her students have to offer (that usually go unnoticed…) and provides an invaluable service that virtually changes the lives of children whose reality is so often to be dismissed or misunderstood…
Jennifer Dignon has dedicated her life’s work to the children of this planet, and to the adults that are blessed to serve them. She is the founder of Heart Child Yoga and Conscious Support Method (CSM). As a Yoga for the Special Child Practitioner and Radiant Child trained professional, Jennifer has studied with children’s yoga Gurus Sonia Sumnar (Integral Yoga) and Shakta Kaur Kalsa (Kundalini Yoga). She has also studied under two teachers who trained directly under Swami Satchitananda. For over 12 years she immersed herself in dedicated practice with one of those teachers. Kundalini meditations eventually became the focus of her practice as she committed years to immersing herself in daily meditations.
Jennifer has a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology with a focus on Movement and Dance Therapy, Masters in Science degree in both Special Education and General Education, and spent 14 years working as a one to one therapist and certified teacher for children with special needs in NYC.
Since the beginning of her regular yoga practice, in 2000, Jennifer has been using yoga to benefit her students with physical, sensory, cognitive and emotional challenges. She has had continued success using yoga with children with autism, PTSD, C-PTSD, sensory abilities, Down Syndrome, ADHD, brain injuries, and other challenges. She has since incorporated sound therapy, movement therapy, energy work, and additional offerings as she adds to her training and personal practice.
Jennifer feels that it is her mission to serve children in a way that helps them truly be seen. She values them as her Gurus and feels she is their student even more than they are hers. The children have continued teaching her how to serve them best. Heart Child Yoga’s philosophy encourages seeing children though the heart. This way of seeing emphasizes what is beautiful and positive, and that everything is a possibility for every child.